Simone de Beauvoir’s Abandoned Novel Gets a Second Life

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Five years after she wrote The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir began work on a novel inspired by her best friend Zaza. Her longtime partner, Jean-Paul Sartre, didn’t find it interesting, an opinion that de Beauvoir seemed to share. But three decades after her death, the novel, titled The Inseparables, will be published, thanks to de Beauvoir’s adopted daughter, Sylvie Le Bon de Beauvoir. “When she wrote it, in 1954, she had already honed her craft as a writer,” Sylvie says to the The New York Times. “She destroyed some works that she was unhappy with. She didn’t destroy this one. About her papers, she told me, ‘You’ll do as you think is right.’”

The Ripped Bodice (the only bookstore in the United States dedicated solely to romance books) released a report looking at the state of diversity in 2016 romance novels. Last year there were only 7.8 published romance novels by writers of color for every 100 books from 20 major romance publishing companies. “Of particular concern is the suggestion, as revealed by the study, that publishers are not reflecting their readership base with any kind of parity. According to Pew Research, black women with college degrees are more likely to read a book than any other group. Since romance readers are approximately 84 percent female, this suggests there is a large swath of the population who don’t see themselves represented in authors or protagonists.” Entertainment Weekly highlights some major takeaways from the survey, read the rest of the appalling stats and then go support romance writers of color.